School drop-out rate concerning: PAC

Well over 40 percent of the pupils who started Grade One with the 2013 matriculants dropped out of school along the way, the Pan Africanist Congress said.

Well over 40 percent of the pupils who started Grade One with the 2013 matriculants dropped out of school along the way, the Pan Africanist Congress said .

"For even one student to drop out in a country that is said to be 'full of hope and opportunity' is a sad indictment," PAC deputy president Ngila Michael Muendane said in a statement.

"It is truly sad that so many young people are not part of the hope and opportunity," he said.

"Sadder still is the fact that those who have passed do not have jobs or businesses for them; they are going to swell the ranks of the unemployed, with the possible ill in that train, such as crime, social disruption and starvation."

Muendane said it would also transpire in time that the 2013 results would be found to have been "cooked to create an impression of real improvement", when the results left much to be desired.

"When compared with the [Independent Education Board (IEB)] results, the public school results pale into insignificance," he said.

"The IEB results carry an impressive number of distinctions, which is more than can be said of the public school results.

"This of course begs the question as to what the education department has failed to do in public school because all the students come from the same generation?"

Muendane said the PAC congratulated all the 2013 matric students who passed.

August 2017

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